by P. S. Power
Luthor regarded her with a stillness that sent a chill into the room. It wasn't a physical thing, but Zack noticed it, like the heat was being stolen from reality around them.
It was, interestingly, Tyler, who spoke then. He moved to touch Ginger's hand, since she was right next to him, politely sipping at the blood of the cows in her vessel. Eve had that too, but the others were all given human. Normally that would have been a problem for Zack, but they, the donors, were all alive, and if he'd been told correctly, treated well. There was no fear, or desperation coming from the cups at any rate. That was strange. Every plate of steak he'd ever seen had held terror and pain. These containers of blood had none of that.
The dead man that wasn't a vampire looked over at Eve, and shrugged in a way that reminded Zack of a puppet being manipulated. Like there were invisible strings making it happen.
"I wonder if the angels did it? The part where it's hard for people to keep things in mind? Gregor mentioned something once that..." Then suddenly, the topic was dropped.
Zack had to wonder however, since he'd never met any angels that he knew of. Then, he might have, and simply missed the whole thing, taking them for something else.
On the nice side they only stayed at the table for about two hours, and the conversation mainly stuck to how different, and similar things were. Luthor really wanted to see about buying, or trading, for the blood production information, but didn't know if asking was allowed. It could be considered improper, after all. This was a meeting of the line walkers, and no one had told him all their possible rules yet.
Eve however was looking to set up operations in this new world, even if she didn't make any money from it, and so was Rebekah. They just didn't know how to go about doing that, exactly. Zack however, had loads of gold and cash around, that wasn't doing anything at all, which would work well enough to get things going that way. Shrugging he smiled and looked at the bone white woman and Eve, who was pale, but just at the lower edge of normal for a white woman.
"We should get that blood stuff going here, too. You two can run it, if I provide the money? Or, I mean, get others to do the work, but you know roughly what to do." He didn't really need to make anything off of it all, so didn't think to suggest that, which set the tone pretty well.
Eve smiled at him, and winked.
"Cow blood first? The human production is more expensive, since we need to pay the donors for it. One of the big mistakes we made back home was putting out the expensive stuff first. Then we were, the vampires, kind of told by the council that we had to either eat animals or pay a hundred bucks a pop for a four ounce bottle of human. That caused problems that you don't need, if you can avoid them."
Luthor stood, bowed, and gestured to the side room.
"Would it be allowed to speak about this? In private, or at least at a remove where our boring and tedious words of business won't disrupt the pleasant evening of these others?"
That got the whole thing to break up into groups, with Claire floating over toward the other room, to act as the mouthpiece for his money, since it was a vampire matter, and her literal job. That meant that a certain line walker wasn't going to be needed. It also let the vampires he didn't know, who had remained very silent the whole evening, to escape. They had their prizes, and probably were glad to have made the contacts with the strangers, but that didn't mean they weren't cautious.
Zack hadn't seen them leave, but Libby and Calley were both gone. Chris was there however, and moved over to speak to Ginger, who was next to Tyler. On the interesting side, the dead man wasn't acting like Chris was coming to poach his girlfriend. There was no posturing or acting like the boy wasn't a real danger that way. It was interesting to see, since it appeared that Ty just didn't care that much about that kind of thing. As in, if his girlfriends wanted to have sex with other people, that was up to them.
Ginger didn't seem all that concerned with Chris however, since he was just a skinny looking kid to her eyes. A human one, and since he wasn't food, that meant she wasn't all that impressed, personally. Even though he could teach vampires how to enjoy sex. She'd noticed that, but didn't get the whole picture yet.
Not until Lenore moved over to the group, and gestured for Zack to come along as well.
"This has been an interesting evening! Christopher, you're working with Eve aren't you? Helping to set up the new line walking concern in our world? I know that Zack, our Zack, is very excited about it. He mentions you often."
That got a nod, and a grin.
"Not that I'm really needed in there, but it's something to do when I'm not in school. Your Kaitlyn and Eve have the line walking portion down well enough, along with other Zack. They think we should keep things separate though, so that people will be more comfortable about it all? Not run by demons? Even Zack said something like that. He seems nice enough to me, but I guess a lot of people there are afraid of him?"
Ginger looked at him closely, and had to fight off rolling her eyes, working out that the skinny, kind of average looking high school boy was important. A part of her wanted to kick herself, but she hadn't really been openly rude yet, just a bit less interested than was probably polite.
Smiling, Zack waved from Ginger to Chris, and tilted his head.
"You two should be pen pals or something. I mean, you're the same person from different worlds, and that's kind of interesting, right?"
The reactions of the group were different then, Lenore being mildly interested that two very different looking people would be the same person, for instance. Ginger was slightly taken aback, and Chris was suddenly resigned to simply never getting a date with the vampire.
Tyler just wanted to have sex with them. All of them, which included Claire, Lenore, and him. Not that he had a need too, or that it was an obsessive level thing, but it sounded interesting to him, and since they clearly weren't all going to fight, that was the other main option. To his mind anyway.
For Zack's part, he just nodded, and smiled at them all.
"We should get you all back pretty soon. It's getting late and I want to get to my vacation home in the morning. I'm going to the beach. It's a pretty big deal for me, since I haven't taken any time off for a while."
Not for a long time, actually. He'd been fifteen on his last real vacation. That had been to Disneyland, and his grandparents had worried about him the whole time, since he'd acted afraid of the people in the costumes. It was, he knew now, simply that he didn't understand the difference between their outer forms, and their shadow selves. That had been hard for his brain to figure out at the time. Plus, some of them were kind of creepy looking.
The blonde vampire girl, Ginger, smiled at him then. It was real looking, which was kind of hard for her kind to do when they were young.
"That sounds fun. Next time you should come to our world for it, and we can all go? I'll have to get a place for us all, or rent a hotel room. We can go to a science fiction convention, and dress up like humans!" That seemed to be an inside joke, which only Tyler laughed at.
It kind of sounded neat however, so Zack nodded.
"I like it! We can do that over a weekend, right? I don't want to use up all my vacation days too soon, in case an emergency comes up." Then he glanced at Lenore, locking eyes with her. The familiarity was striking, and she looked nice, being dressed up for public consumption like she was. "I work for myself, but the boss is a slave driver at times."
There was nothing even approaching a chuckle, just a somber nod.
"I know the feeling. Well, I'll leave making those arrangements up to Ginger and Tyler? I'm not certain where Calley has gotten off too, exactly." She knew the general direction, since there were twin bat girl sounding sex noises coming from Libby's room. That she was a bit of a sex fiend was a known thing, and apparently Calley was no different on that score, or not much.
Tyler sighed, which was fake, and shook his head a little.
"We should have sent Ginger off with them, if nothing else. She just got the ability
to feel that kind of thing back..."
Chris looked away, trying not to feel jealous, since he sort of liked Libby, and the idea of two of her being there wanting sex was a bit much to bear.
Giving them all a group shrug, Zack waved in the right direction.
"You should all go. Just, Chris, don't mention this to Don?" That could create a problem, if it became known.
None of these people were going to pass diseases or get pregnant however, and even if they were the same person inside, Ginger and Chris were externally far more different than the bat shifters were from one another. They all left then, though Lenore stayed behind, watching them walk away.
"Ah, children. I remember what it was like to be young, I think. It's been a while, so I may be imagining that part. There was something about me heroically toiling for years on end, and saving my people?" She grinned just a tiny bit at the end.
He had to agree with the basic thought, really.
"Yeah. I'm... I lived most of my life in the void, and time passes differently there. So really... I'm so old now that the rest of you seem like babies to me. Not just you and Ginger, but all of you. Chris is over a thousand years old, you know?"
"I didn't, to be honest. Amazing. It takes that long to learn the skills you taught Eve and Kait?" She looked off at the other room, where Eve was, and then over at Kate, since the idea was probably pretty similar to her mind, even if they were different Alede.
"Yes. There's a cost to everything worth doing. I know that a lot of people don't get that, as if the time spent there doesn't count somehow, but it does. You live all of it. Every single second. After a while you tend to go a bit insane, I think."
That got him to recall Riley's theory. That at the end of each reality would be one being, in one line, floating forever in nothingness, alone. He was able to understand what that really meant, but for those beings there was no escape. There was nothing around them and no way to leave, ever. No way to do anything except go mad, eventually.
It would take a long time to happen for some of them.
Zack, for instance, had lived like that for thousands of years. Most of that time hadn't really been alone however. Big Shadow had been there, or one of the others, to keep him company through most of it. Even if they didn't speak, he knew they were around. There was a certainty and closeness to that kind of thing.
Being truly alone, for millions, or billions, of years, might well have an effect that even he wasn't ready for. Worse, he couldn't even begin to understand the madness that would follow. It would likely be different for everyone. Some would become bland and boring, probably barely thinking at all. Some would become monsters on a level that no one would have ever thought could exist, he bet. Hanging there, at the end of everything, waiting. Planning to do... Something.
Blinking he realized that Lenore had been speaking, her voice soft and friendly.
"I should arrange a party for you and your people, in my world? I'd love to meet you all. Plus it makes fine business sense, don't you think?" She was being playful and touched his arm with her cool hand. Flirting with him.
It was flattering, but he didn't fall for it. Not that she didn't mean it. She would have had sex with him, right then, if he wanted. For her, even with a newly rekindled sex drive, that was business too, however. You used what others wanted to influence and control them. Thankfully he was in control of that part of himself, now. Finally. Not feeding the Alede was paying off that way, big time.
Even spreading it out would probably help a lot.
Zack had never really gotten to try that, because the instant he figured out how to feed his friends energy, a lot of them had wanted in on it. Not that he blamed them for wanting to eat, but not having to have sex three or four times a day himself was kind of nice. Not that he didn't enjoy it, but too much of a good thing was still too much, and chafing was a real problem, or had been.
Now he could go into the void and come out healed, perfectly, if he took damage, but still, it was nicer to not be forced to do things like that all the time. It was hard enough to be in the body of a young man, really. Having been both male and female, Zack knew the difference now. Women could enjoy sex, but men were pushed into it. Having only one perspective led people to think things about what others went through into a lot of distortion.
Lenore however pretty much was just using that part of him, or trying to, in a way that would put her in an advantageous position to be friends with a being she thought of as powerful. Kind too, her shadow assured him. Her Zack was a nice man, for his type of person, and he, the Zack there, was even more so, as far as she could see. She was even wondering, examining him, if all Zack's were basically gentle beings.
That got him to think about it, and realize that probably wasn't the truth in the end.
"We're a collection of people, the ones that I've been in contact with, that do seem to be basically good, in the way I think about it. There probably millions, or billions of Zack's or people close enough to being me that there is a connection that counts, and half of them are probably more or less evil. There were a lot of times when I could have gone that way, and for each of those, out there, somewhere in the greater scheme of things each of them exists, having turned out a lot differently."
It was, in a way, a perfect balance. A perfect neutrality built over... Everything.
There was a big picture there, that held a kernel that he needed to examine, closely, and it called to him, but...
Before he could consider it, the woman, looking cute and a bit younger than he did, about nineteen or twenty, wrinkled her nose at him. It was distracting enough that he let his focus move back to her instead of the mysteries of creation.
"You read my mind? That's hardly fair. Not that I'm unused to it, from my own Zack. So, do you think that there are evil versions of us doing battle at this moment instead of having polite conversation in your parlor?"
That got him to nod at her.
"Oh, yeah. Everything is probably happening. Billions of worlds where we never meet. Ones where I'm the awesome vampire and you're just the line walker. Ones where I'm just your boyfriend, and we're both human, or lizard people. Places where we're both fighting in the war against the aliens, or zombies. That and... Not just more, but everything else that can happen. Ever. Including things that we would never be able to understand. Things where we're just sentient balls of light, striving to overcome the limits of being mere energy?"
It was a lot, and a huge idea, but a cool hand came out and touched his arm.
"Interesting. On the good side, I think that we only need concern ourselves over the realities that we connect with. Let's avoid the ones where I'm an awful being however? I can be a bit of a bitch, I hear."
He grinned and shook his head, not falling for that trap.
"That sounds like a plan in general. It's probably not going to happen forever, since we go to different worlds blind, but I'll attempt to keep that in mind. So far so good?" That led to an overview of the people that he'd visited with Riley's letters.
She was fascinated by the way some of the places had seemed to him, but didn't ask too many questions. Getting perhaps that twenty minute visits to a node didn't actually mean he was an expert on things yet. That did remind him to make some return visits to some of them, since you didn't become friends with people that were never around. Not that it had been in his instructions from the trickster. Then, the being hadn't come and told him not to do that either, yet.
The tale of his journey to other worlds got a bit of an audience, and finished a bit before a troop of rather satisfied and sheepish people came out of Libby's room. Lenore smiled and tried not to indicate that she could smell the combined pheromones and scents of sex on them. All of them. Including in combinations that were probably a bit sketchy, given that there were people who were the same... Person involved, in different forms.
He had no problem with that. Since Zack considered it as either them being different people, or, if you wanted to ge
t into it on a different level, masturbation. Either way was fine with him. Then, he went out of his way not to care about things like that.
Calley held Libby's hand, and leaned her shoulder into her. At least she was dressed up like that ambassador, and in her clothing. The inner shadow indicated that it was tempting to trade places for a while, but that wouldn't work, since Libby was a lot older now, and could travel on the lines. While she could possibly fake being a politician, Calley would be hard pressed to do the other side of things.
Otherwise they totally would have tried it out. That was just the kind of people they both were.
Ginger was feeling a bit upset, inside, since she'd done some things with Chris that weren't all that bad, but had left her wondering how close to having sex with her own brother she'd actually come. That wasn't a big issue however, since genetically they weren't all that close. There was a mental pattern that was linked, but it was a lot more distance than say, he had with Chris.
Then, Zack wasn't going to blow the guy either, so her feelings that way were a thing for her to work out. She hadn't wanted to be rude about it, and while not attracted to the boy, she also didn't want to give offense, and had to be a big, tough, vampire about it all. It was a rule. In both worlds, it seemed.
Thankfully, that wasn't enough to really hurt her mind. She was uneasy, but not harmed by what she'd chosen to do in that room.
Tyler was happy enough, having gotten enough from everyone else there that he felt, if not loved, then at least appreciated. Including Chris, which the kid wasn't bothered about at all. That was different, since Zack was a little bit of a homophobe, he knew. Not as an ethical or moral thing, but he really didn't want to have sex with other men, and the idea left him feeling a bit uneasy. As in a real fear. An irrational one.